I heard Will on the podcast from simply tech and thought he did a great job. Its nice hearing a voice to go with the face. I also watched the Flock screencast and thought it was very well-done and highly informative. I love to read the Flock blog to find out what you guys are up to. I'm a big fans of the Flock crew. Will, Daryl, Chris, Andy, Lloyd, and the others are such a great group of people and really deserve a pat on the back for all their hard work. I've been thinking of joining the community and posting something for a while now, but it was Will's comments about feedback on the podcast that really inspired me to write and join the community. I also made a wallpaper with the Flock logo I got from one of the Flick'r photo albums, so once I figure out how to upload it to you guys I'll do that. Anyway, here's the story of how I came to know Flock.

I've been an off-an-on Flock user since version .49. I read about it somewhere, probably a article on cnet that had a link to digg and thought I'd give it a try. The fact that it was based on Firefox was all the more reason to give it a test drive. I didn't use it much at first because it just didn't fit my personality. As you can probably tell from my username, I'm not a social person in real life, so I didn't feel like I really had a need for a "social browser". I don't blog and don't upload a lot of photos... unless I actually go somewhere and take pictures. I tried RSS back when it first came out but wasn't too impressed with it, so I pretty much stopped. I'll probably try RSS again, but I'm in no rush. I really don't care to use delicious to store my bookmarks online and I don't really have a need for saving snippets. I could see the value of the features for people who are into that kinda thing, and have recommended it to a few people whom I thought might be interested, but it really didn't fit me.

I tried Flock as an "alternative browser" for a few days but stopped for some reason. Then one day, I think I was cleaning up my computer and uninstalling software I either no longer used or hadn't used for a while. I decided to give Flock another chance and decided I might just keep it around to spice things up at work. I'm a die-hard Firefox user, from back when it was called Firebird, but sometimes it was nice to use Flock for a change. I only use IE when I have to so Flock became my browser for casual browsing in my downtime. At some point I checked out the Flock blog and started reading one of Daryl's posts. I really enjoyed whatever he was posting about and liked his writing style. A short time later, I got hooked on the blog and ended up using Flock to surf to other sites (mostly ebay, amazon, maybe a couple news sites) when I finished reading the postings or if there wasn't anything new. Over time, I gradually found myself using it more and more, which echoed something else Daryl posted about how he hadn't used Flock in a while but how he started using it more and more after using it again... hopefully I'm getting that right. So I guess Daryl gets the credit for me becoming a Flock user. When Will joined the flock team, I was greatly impressed with his passion and commitment to the community... which I still hadn't joined. Every time I read one of his blog posts, I can see and feel how deeply he cares not only for the community, but Flock itself. I honestly feel that Flock has a charismatic and admirable ambassador in Will.

When I read Bart's post about a photobucket version of Flock that would make it easier to upload photos, I got really excited. I have a photobucket account but I don't use it much because its just too much hassle to browse to where the photos are, blah blah blah... you all know the process. I have 639 pictures (240MB) from my trip to Canada last summer and the thought of manually going through the process 639 times just filled me with dread. I installed the Photobucket edition of Flock when I came home from work last night and after fighting with photobucket, I was uploading the pictures while I started typing this. I was so happy I could have cried. Finally, I can share the pictures with my friends around the world. This is a truly great piece of software and I wish I could give everyone involved a big hug.

In the email I was sending to everyone with the Photobucket album links, I made sure to include a link to the Flock homepage and mentioned I was using the Photobucket version of Flock to upload the pics. I also told them what a great, safe browser it is and listed some of the features it has, in addition to the photo upload tool I was using. Granted the email was only going to 10 or 12 people, but if they try it, like it, and spread the word, who knows how many more people will try it, like it, and spread the word.

Anyway, now that I'm a member of the community, I would like to give back to those who have given so much to me in the way of this fine browser. I'm not quite sure I understand the whole bug reporting and replicating bugs/errors, but I'm sure I can learn or if there is something else I can do to help I'd be happy to give it a try. I'm not a programmer or designer, so I don't feel comfortable helping with that aspect, but I'm game for helping out with other stuff.

Thanks for reading.